The present disclosure relates to a sightline estimation system and a sightline estimation method for estimating a sightline of a driver of a vehicle.
A great amount of resources are now being used to research and develop technology for estimating the sightline of a vehicle driver based on the facial image of the driver captured by a camera. Such a technology can be applied to a device that issues a warning to a vehicle driver when detecting, from the sightline direction of the driver, that the driver is inattentively driving the vehicle or not making the necessary safety precautions. The technology may also be applied to a device that predicts, from the sightline direction of the driver, the next action or intention of the driver to control operation of the vehicle. Further, the technology may be applied to a device that provides information related to about an in the direction of the sightline of the vehicle driver. Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication No. 2008-210239 describes an example of a sightline estimation device that estimates the sightline of a driver.
The sightline estimation device estimates the sightline direction based on the direction of the face and the direction of the eyes detected from the facial image of the vehicle driver using the camera as a reference. The sightline estimation device also estimates a front side reference that recognized by the vehicle driver as the front based on time-series changes in the sightline direction using the camera as a reference. The sightline estimation device corrects the sightline direction based on the front side reference using the camera as a reference and outputs a sightline signal indicating the corrected sightline direction.
The technology described in Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication No. 2008-210239 allows the sightline direction of the driver to be estimated with high accuracy.
When the details of driving assistance are determined based on the characteristics of the sightline of the driver, the accuracy of driving assistance is effectively improved. Moreover, when information related to an event attracting the attention of the driver is provided based on the characteristics of the sightline of the driver, the benefits obtained from the provided information become further effective. As apparent from the foregoing examples, there is an increasing demand for the utilization of the characteristics of the sightline of a driver in the field of various types of on-board information processing. However, the sightline of a driver frequently changes in accordance with each type of information related to the traveling vehicle, such as information related to the situation in which the vehicle is traveling and the state of the vehicle in that situation. Thus, it is not easy to acquire the characteristics when the sightline frequently of the driver frequently changes.